The influence of residential segregation and its correlates on ethnic enterprise in urban areas

I develop and estimate a model of potential to enter self-employment based on individual and community-level factors. Of particular interest was the influence of racial residential segregation processes, and segregation's tendency to concentrate persons with similar demographic profiles in geographic space. It has been argued that segregation processes can also concentrate poverty and its associated social dislocations. An analysis of a database of 8917 households in four U.S. metropolitan areas revealed that two residential segregation processes (clustering and interaction) limit and enhance potential entry into self-employment for blacks, and provides a partial explanation for the longstanding gaps in white and black self-employment rates.     

An Analysis of Contrarian Investment Strategies in the UK

The performance of contrarian, or value strategies – those that invest in stocks that have low market value relative to a measure of their fundamentals – continues to attract attention from researchers and practitioners alike. While there is much extant evidence on the profitability of value strategies, however, most of this evidence pertains to the US. In this paper, we provide a detailed characterisation of value strategies using data on UK stocks for the period 1975 to 1998. We first undertake simple one-way and two-way classifications of stocks in which value is defined using both past performance and expected future performance. Using sales growth as a proxy for past performance and book-to-market, earnings yield and cash flow yield as measures of expected future performance, we find that that stocks that have both poor past performance and low expected future performance have significantly higher returns than those that have either good past performance or good expected future performance. Allowing for size effects in returns reduces the value premium but it nevertheless remains significant. We go on to explore whether the profitability of value strategies in the UK can be explained using the three factor model of Fama and French (1996). Broadly consistent with the results for the US, we find that using the one-way classification the excess returns to almost all value strategies can be explained by their loading on the market, book-to-market and size factors. However, in contrast with the US, using the two-way classification there are excess returns to value strategies based on book-to-market and sales growth, even after controlling for their loading on the market, book-to-market and size factors.     

Employee Relations and the Likelihood of Occurrence of Corporate Financial Distress

Abstract:   In this paper, we investigate the association of employee relations with the occurrence of onset of financial distress. We argue that if adverse economic conditions arise, firms that have maintained good employee relations will be more effective in obtaining temporary labor concessions. As a result, firms with good employee relations, to the extent they are dependent on labor in the conduct of business operations, should be more likely to avoid the onset of future financial distress. The empirical findings we document support this prior.     

A UK Test of an Inflation‐Adjusted Ohlson Model

Abstract:   This paper conducts a UK test of a version of the Ohlson (1995) model. We should only expect abnormal earnings to revert to zero if the book value of assets is economically meaningful. In this paper we make use of the property revaluations common in UK accounts, but estimate other asset values and earnings in inflation‐adjusted terms. This, we argue, gives rise to estimates of abnormal earnings that can reasonably be expected to revert to zero. We then test this modified model on UK data using the Dechow, Hutton and Sloan (1999) method. In line with the predictions of the Ohlson model, we find that these modified abnormal earnings appear to mean revert, and that a first order autoregressive process is sufficient to capture the persistence of UK real abnormal earnings. The modified abnormal earnings model in general predicts one year ahead earnings more successfully than an unmodified model. Furthermore, for much of the sample period, one year ahead predictions of abnormal earnings are better for the real model during periods of higher inflation. The undervaluation problem found in prior studies appears to be replaced with an overvaluation problem in the real model which is more acute during periods of high inflation. Last, we show that an estimate of the model based upon an industry level specification appears to perform no better than a market‐wide specification of the model.     

The wheels of a command economy: allocating Soviet vehicles

Using original archival sources, this article traces the allocation of vehicles by the Soviet economy and shows the complicated reality of the system’s operation. ‘Planned’ distribution was anything but orderly as decrees overturned quarterly plans, wholesalers ignored planning instructions by keeping vehicles for themselves or redirecting them to others, and the producer intervened through its control of the planning ‘aftermarket’. Existing stocks of vehicles were redistributed by administrative mobilizations that were resisted and thwarted by those losing vehicles. Behind the scenes, ‘grey’ markets reallocated used vehicles.     

A method for assessing highway qualities to integrate values in highway planning

Highway infrastructure planning is most often oriented toward assessing and maintaining physical inventories but it is often the lack of social knowledge about how people perceive, value and use a transportation system that generates the greatest user conflict and mistrust of public agency behavior. Using results from a 2001 statewide survey of Alaska residents, this paper presents a methodology for examining highway systems as a collection of intrinsic highway qualities and special places that provide a spectrum of highway experience opportunities. The concept of a highway experience opportunity spectrum is described and a number of potential dimensions for creating experience opportunity classes are suggested. With knowledge of spatial locations of intrinsic highway qualities, transportation planners can make informed choices to maintain or alter the set of highway experience opportunities associated with a highway system.     

Market Delineation under the Merger Guidelines: Monopoly Cases and Alternative Approaches

Despite the well-known Cellophane fallacy, the Merger Guidelines' market-delineation paradigm, which examines the effects of price increases above the prevailing level, has substantial utility in many monopoly cases. For monopoly cases in which the Guidelines' approach is not appropriate due to the Cellophane fallacy, no modification of that approach appears to solve the problem is a useful way. More direct methods for assessing monopoly power are likely to be preferable to structural analysis in many monopoly and merger cases.